Accra, Ghana//-The Chairman of the Accra-based Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Dr Sodzi Sodzi-Tettey has urged journalists to pay a lot more attention to how public funds are utilized in the country.
His comment comes at the time when the government is reluctant to have the country’s COVID-19 expenditure scrutinized by parliament.
Dr Sodzi-Tettey gave encouragement when he spoke as the guest speaker at the seventh Institute of Finance and Economic Journalists (IFEJ) Flamingo Awards held in Accra on 25th February 2022. The Over Business and Financial Journalist of the Year 2021 was won by Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, Editor-In-Chief of African Eye Report.
Speaking on the topic: ‘The Impact of Covid-19 on Business Resilience and Recovery in the Ghanaian Economy’, he noted: “In the first quarter of 2020, the world literally changed.
COVID-19, a raging global pandemic impacted all facets of the Ghanaian society. Over time, we have come to appreciate that while the pandemic posed an enormous threat, it also created new opportunities”.
Immediate impact of the pandemic on Ghanaian businesses
According to him, a significant percentage of businesses temporarily or permanently closed during the pandemic. Whereas four sectors were particularly affected, namely Education (65%), Finance (47%), Transport (46%), and Manufacturing (40%).
Over 90% of business establishments reported that sales in April decreased compared to the same month in 2019. Ghana’s GDP growth rate shrank throughout 2020.
The impact on the workforce was very telling with 46% of businesses reducing wages for over 25% of their workforce, affecting an estimated 750,000 workers.
Along the same vein, over 37% of businesses started or increased their use of mobile money and nearly 10% of firms expanded their use of the internet to conduct business.
Tourism sector
The tourism sector, globally accounting for 10.4% of GDP and 9.9% of employment in 2017, took a hard hit both globally and locally.
“In Ghana, our National Tourism Development plan had targeted 8 million visits per annum by 2027 with an expected $8 billion addition to the economy. This was significant, given that the highest Eurobond by Ghana was $3.02 billion in 2021.
Riding on the back of the successful year of Return in 2019 that brought Africans and African Americans in the diaspora to Ghana, hopes were indeed high for a windfall from tourism”.
However, with travel restrictions and lockdowns being key weapons in the anti-Covid arsenal, it is safe to conclude that Ghana’s tourism ambitions crashed in 2020.
Many businesses collapsed and 41,952 lost their jobs in the immediate aftermath of partial lockdown in Ghana in addition to other short-term impacts.
Among the long-term impact, businesses witnessed Changes in business operating models: online meetings, conferencing, and remote work provisions gained prominence. Ladies and Gentlemen, this meant that business travel was never and has never been the same.
There is therefore an enduring need for players in the hospitality industry to adapt at a cost. High financing costs for players in the industry has also been an issue.
This has been occasioned by the fact that almost all Covid-19 financial reliefs provided by banks have elapsed while the business challenges linger, thus making industry players struggle to meet repayment schedules.
In some cases, this has led to late payment penalties including loss of access to future funding. Loss of highly skilled staff is another long-term challenge. This has been due to layoffs or change of career paths.
Government policies
Dr Sodzi-Tettey noted: “In April 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, the government announced an economic stimulus package under the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme (CAP).
This stimulus package had several key initiatives including GH¢579.5m for COVID-19 Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan; and GH¢323m as relief (e.g., PPEs, tax waiver, allowances, transportation and COVID insurance) for frontline health workers”.
Other interventions he mentioned include relief for provision of water and sanitation for households for three months; a three-month subsidy for electricity use in households and businesses; and the distribution of hot meals and food packages.
“As a Social Justice organization, we took particular interest in the plight of market women. We were gratified to learn that the government had allocated GH¢600m for Micro, Small & Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) supplemented by up to GH¢400m in bank lending.
However, we decided to take our interest many steps further and followed up with the market women themselves. On one of our Leadership Dialogues celebrating the leadership of women in the pandemic”.
As the government rolls out these interventions, Dr Sodzi-Tettey said it is crucial to remove bureaucratic hurdles & monitor implementation to be sure policy objectives are indeed met especially for intended beneficiaries!
How Nyaho Hospital dealt with the pandemic
Dr Sodzi-Tettey who is the Board Chairman of Nyaho Medical Centre which has been offering quality healthcare in Ghana for half a century put in place systems to deal with the deadly pandemic.
In his words: “When Covid[1]struck, we decided to embrace the global call on all countries to adopt a ‘whole of government’ and ‘whole of society’ approach and positioned ourselves to complement the government’s Covid-19 response.
We applied to the Health Facilities Regulatory Agency to be designated as a Covid-19 treatment site”.
4 lessons
He stated that if businesses were to recover and be resilient, the following four lessons from Nyaho would be particularly useful reflection points.
On 12th March 2020, the second recorded case of COVID-19 in Ghana was identified, isolated and tested at Nyaho Medical Centre through our effective triage system implemented in February 2020.
The first key lesson is therefore one of early identification of risks, clarifying decision making frameworks, learning and continuously improving.
In May 2020, Nyaho Medical Centre together with mPharma invested about GH¢1,500,000.00 in a Polymerase Chain Reaction laboratory (PCR lab) to test for COVID-19 and was the first private facility to be accredited by the government to test for COVID-19 in Ghana.
The hospital he explained also dedicated a team to upload data daily to digital platforms for contact tracing and authentication of COVID-19 results of travelers.
“Our second lesson is one of teamwork, how important it is to accelerate innovation through partnerships, work collaboratively with stakeholders, identify, and respect competencies and not let ego get in the way.
Our space constraints ensured that having been accredited as the first private health facility by HeFRA to manage Covid-19 cases, we had to resort to our virtual platform, to manage asymptomatic patients and patients with mild symptoms”.
This leads to our third lesson, namely that capacity constraints affect all systems, and that the private sector plays a critical role but is still limited in times of pandemics”.
Government initiatives in times of crises therefore need to factor in the capacity constraints within the private sector. Well addressed, we enhance our overall national response, Mr Sodzi-Tettey added.
“To create a psychology safe environment, we built on our culture of trust by being open and transparent, included staff in problem solving, provided free lunch, provided clinical psychology support for all staff, enforced leave during down times, made PPE and oxygen availability performance metrics and changed the frequency of staff durbars from quarterly to monthly events.
Psychological safety during pandemics like Covid-19 and indeed always, is critical to resilience and to recovery”.
World Bank’s assurance
The World Bank’s Lead Country Economist, Aurelien Kruse who spoke on behalf of the World Bank’s Country Director for Ghana, assured that the Bank is committed to supporting the country to get back on its feet.
African Eye Report
